He pulled himself out of the skills comp last night, but he seemed fine today. I don't think the Islanders have anything to worry about.

The "superskills" kinda sucked. I saw the obstacle course, then jumped on a bus to go into town to meet up with some friends, so I didn't get back until the accuracy shooting. I thought the obstacle course lame, lame, lame. It seemed like they were running Peewee AAA drills. We used to deke between pucks, and saucer pass over barriers too. Way beneath NHL skill levels. If there was more of a challenge to it, it might have been interesting. The Puck Control Relay was one of my favourite events anyways, so I wish they'd left it alone. Accuracy and hardest shot were decent, 103.1 is a mean shot. Thought Phaneuf would do better, and Ovechkin probably shouldn't have been in this comp. The breakaways sucked. I was expecting creativity NBA-style, and it seemed the players were more concerned with not embarrassing themselves. The goalies trying to poke check everybody certainly didn't help either. And how inconsistent was the judging?

Ah well. It was decent to have on in the background during the pre-drink before the bar last night, and the game today actually provided something to watch in lieu of football.

I'm one of those people who believes that All-Star games are useless, so I really think they ought to just scrap the whole thing. The players don't go all-out, and the only motivation these guys have is to NOT play hard, since they all obviously want to avoid injury.

We get the Olympics every 4 years, the World Championships (which will be in Halifax this year - I get free entry to every single game!! ) every year, and the World Cup/Canada Cup every so often, and they are more like All-Star comps than the actual game, so I really don't see the point.